"As we write this, the horrors of war have reached Ukraine. The last time Kyiv experienced such intense artillery fire was during the Second World War. Back then, incidentally, was also the last time tanks drove through its streets. It is worth everyone knowing that Vladimir Putin is obsessed with the history and events of the Second World War."

Russian propaganda has been characterising Ukraine as Nazi and fascist from the very moment that Russian army special forces invaded Ukraine, annexing Crimea and inventing and developing the conflict in the Donbas region that has now lasted for eight years.

The signatories of the statement are researchers who study the events of the Second World War, genocide and the Holocaust – people who professionally engage in the study of fascism and Nazism and the preservation of the memory of the victims. Many of them are involved in the active fight against the successors and heirs of these criminal regimes, as well as those who wish to deny, conceal or whitewash their crimes.

"We categorically reject the Russian regime's cynical and unacceptable use of the word "genocide", as well as its vile appropriation of the memory of the Second World War and the Holocaust, by equating the Ukrainian state with the Nazi regime in order to justify Russia's unprovoked aggression against a neighbouring country. Such rhetoric and content are not based on facts, they are morally repugnant and an insult to the millions of victims of Nazism, as well as to those who courageously fought against Nazism, including Russian and Ukrainian soldiers."
Used Daro Sulakauri/Getty Images photograph